Sandra McGrew Named Executive Director of ACHI

The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) in Little Rock has named Sandra McGrew as executive director.

McGrew joined the independent health policy center in 2019 as director of external relations. She had served as interim executive director since May following the retirement of Danielle Taylor.

In her new role, McGrew will lead organizational operations for ACHI, including strategic planning, executive engagement, contracting, and project management.

Before joining ACHI, McGrew held various leadership and communications positions, including director of content marketing at Little Rock public relations firm Ghidotti, spokesperson for the Arkansas secretary of state, and editor-in-chief of Little Rock Soirée magazine.

McGrew began her career as a journalist and reported for KLRT in Little Rock.

She has a bachelor’s from Harding University and an accreditation in public relations from the Public Relations Society of America, where she currently serves on the Arkansas chapter’s board of directors.

ACHI also announced the promotions of Jennifer Wessel to director of health policy and Joshua Cook to director of external relations.

Wessel was a senior policy analyst at ACHI before becoming interim director of health policy last January. Cook was ACHI’s assistant director of external relations before becoming interim director of external relations in May.

Craig Wilson was named president and CEO of ACHI in October.

“With our leadership team in place, ACHI is well positioned to build upon our analytic capacity and data assets, not only to provide actionable and timely insights and inform decision-makers, but also to support collaborative research efforts, quality improvement initiatives, and evaluations of system performance at this crucial juncture for health care in Arkansas,” Wilson said in a news release.